Between the Blessed Isles and the Brooklyn Bridge
by Eppie Black
Summary: Gangs of New York - NYC 1902 (Forty Years after the Draft Riot) A THIRD CHAPTER! SEE INSIDE
1. Years Gone By

Title: Somewhere Between the Blessed Isles and the Brooklyn Bridge  
  
Author: Eppie Black  
  
Fandom: Gangs of New York  
  
Series: None, at least not yet, maybe with some help...  
  
Rating: PG (for adult situations and a couple of curse words- I'm no  
  
good at this rating thing)  
  
Pairings: Amsterdam Vallon/Jenny Everdine  
  
Warnings: Unbetaed Summary: Um, Amsterdam sees dead people then we meet the family. (Takes place forty years after the Draft Riot.)  
  
Author's Notes: This fic was originally published on a list for Gangs of New York fanfiction, e-mail me (eppieblack2000@yahoo.com) if you want an introduction to the list. The Blessed Isles in this case refers to the afterlife If anybody has any ideas about what could happen to Amsterdam in his search for a good death, about his family or about his ghostly greek chorus (Priest and Bill) let me know - I'm at a loss right now.  
  
Somewhere Between the Blessed Isles and the Brooklyn Bridge  
  
by Eppie Black  
  
New York, 1902- Amsterdam Vallon  
  
I had a dream that told me my life was about to change, even though I didn't know it right at first. At the very first I didn't even realize that I was dreaming or even that I was asleep.  
  
One chill fall night after I had locked up the Harp and Drum I was laying on our bed staring up at the ceiling trying to relax myself into sleep. Jenny was curled up beside me, already asleep. It was so quiet in the building that I could hear a pencil scratching against paper in the next room; My youngest son, Sean, diligently hunched over his engineering manuals.  
  
Suddenly a louder scrape of wood against floor made me turn my head toward the middle of the room. An old chair had been turned away from Jenny's dressing table and now faced the bed.  
  
In the chair sat Bill Cutting as solid as a living man and just as pitiful and tortured a human soul as he had looked the first night that I had seen him this way, the night I saved his life. Just like that night forty years ago he was wrapped in an American Flag, the one he always said had covered his father's coffin on the way to the cemetary, the one that I knew was right that second hanging on the left-hand side of the bar mirror downstairs in the Harp and Drum.  
  
Then he spoke, though it wasn't to me, and despite what he said it was the sudden familiarity of his voice as much as his words that chilled me to the very bone.  
  
"He's gonna have to cross the river soon." He said with a deep sadness.  
  
If his voice chilled me the one I heard next paralyzed me from deep within and brought the tears in my eyes down to my cheeks. I heard the warmth, the full-fledged County Kerry accent of my father's voice as a second specter materialized behind Bill Cutting.  
  
"There's no reason to be sad about it. He's lived a full and honourable life."  
  
"But how's he gonna die, Priest?" said the former ruler of the Five Points looking back over his shoulder. "Have a heart-attack throwing some worthless drunken mug out of the bar? Drop dead of a stroke over his account book? That ain't a death for a warrior!"  
  
Bill's temper was getting up, I could see that he was twitching with it, just like he had when he was alive. My father had fully materialized now. Standing there in his long black coat he towered over Bill, still sitting in the chair.  
  
"No Bill." my father said reaching down just then to smooth The Butcher's ever-wretched hair, touching his erstwhile mortal enemy with a calming gentleness. "Amsterdam won't die like that. He'll find his own honorable death. Even if he has to go looking for it, just as you did."  
  
Bill looked up at my father and said, "I hope Amsterdam does a better job of it than I did. I didn't mean to get fusiladed by the United States Navy, you know. Thank God the kid struck the killing blow. I mean, that was embarassing."  
  
I could almost swear that as the two specters faded, I could see my father, Priest Vallon, smiling indulgently at Bill Cutting.  
  
I thought that after that I lay awake, thinking about Bill and Father and my life and them talking about me dying.  
  
My father had given me life. He made me believe that there was a God, just because he was himself so much like what I thought God was. He made me believe in love just because he seemed to embody it in himself. When I was a child, he was my world.  
  
Then, years after Da was gone, Bill Cutting took what Priest Vallon had made and what the Reformatory had kept alive and, in his demented and obsessed way, forged me into a man. I owed him a lot, the sick sad son-of-a- bitch.  
  
Part Two- Still Dreaming?  
  
Part II  
  
New York, 1902- Amsterdam Vallon- Still Dreaming?  
  
I think about myself - my own mortality. I have a little influence, a little respect, an almost honest business and a wife who is my partner and soulmate. We've raised seven children together and now have nineteen grandchildren, whom I would tell you all about with the slightest of promptings. It has been a full and honourable life, just like my father said.  
  
I wonder that, if I have to go, a quiet death might not be best after all. I don't want to know that I'm dying, because, I don't want to die.  
  
Then I wake up and find that I must have been asleep and dreaming because now I am awake. It is suddenly morning. Jenny is no longer by my side. The household and the city are already both on the day-shift now.  
  
I get dressed and head for the kitchen. There's a lot of commotion and youthful voices issuing from that corner of the apartment. I stand in the doorway a moment and watch the scene.  
  
Sean is just finishing putting his surveyor's tools into his bag, packing them with meticulous care. Our eldest grand-daughter Mary Pat is slicing bread. The other four grandchildren who live with us (that is Katie, Mary Pat's sister, whose mother we lost to the streets and Billy, Patrick and Janie whose mother is in service uptown) are busy getting ready for school.  
  
Jenny is bustling around, serving breakfast and inspecting school uniforms. Coming close to me she gives me an old familiar look and says, exagerating her accent, "It's good of ya to honour us with your presence this morning, Amsterdam."  
  
I laugh, because when she talks like that she sounds like she's still barely twenty and because, even in her housedress and apron, she looks like she ought to be some grand-dame presiding over a high-tea uptown instead of being my wife feeding the grandchildren bread and cold potatoes down here in our little apartment above the Harp and Drum.  
  
Then I'm swept into the fray myself, tying Billy's and Patrick's ties for them. But part of my mind lingers elsewhere.  
  
"It's a man's job to teach a boy how to dress like a man." Jenny says setting me to work. I try to teach them the knot, but in my head I'm remembering the scrape of my father's razor against his face.  
  
Then Patrick brings me back to the present:  
  
"Grand-da." he says in his high-pitched boy's voice, "our Sean's going down the big hole today."  
  
"The one the uptown people are going to run the trains through." Billy adds with an eight-year-olds solemnity.  
  
I glance up at Sean. He's standing there in a corner now backed up against the hoosier cabinet, eating his breakfast, a cheese sandwich in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other.  
  
"I'm surveying the IRT excavation today. Well, just helping with it, really." he says between bites.  
  
Sean is twenty-two years old. With his blonde hair, green eyes and fair skin he certainly looks like the blood of my blood. He's not though. Like all of our children he was once one of the city's unwanted, orphaned and abandoned. My first memories of him are of a sickly, collicky baby who we weren't sure would live a month. Now he's the brightest, hardest working lad in New York City and very proud of his hard won training. Standing there wearing the long canvas duster coat he uses to protect his clothes from construction debris with his bag of notes and instruments slung across his shoulder he almost looks ready for battle.  
  
"You're going down that big hole?" I ask him. There's something that seems to catch in my throat at that moment. I've got this terrible feeling all of a sudden that my Sean is being sent down that hole as an expendable Irish canary. It must be the past being so close to the surface this morning.  
  
"Yeah, I am." he answers me proudly.  
  
"God be with you, Son." I murmur in reply.  
  
He smiles at me as if I were a thousand years out of date.  
  
"Sure, Da." he says.  
  
Then Jenny catches wind of my mood and she's saying to me:  
  
"Where are you this morning, Amsterdam? You look like your half way in another world."  
  
I have decided what I want to do with this day so I say to her, "If you and the girls can take care of the early customers, I've got a mind to take the train to the cemetary, visit our dead and light candles in the mortuary chapel."  
  
I want to take Sean with me, but I know that won't be possible so I suggest that I take Patrick and Billy.  
  
"The nuns can do without them for one day." I said, "so they can go and pay their respects to the ones whose names they're wearing."  
  
The two boys want to go, of course; they want to ride the train and light candles. Jenny would be absolutely livid if she weren't so worried about me.  
  
She tells the boys -in no uncertain terms- that they have to go to school. But placates them by saying, "Your Grand-da can take you on the train on Saturday. You can go someplace nice."  
  
Then everyone is ready and the kids are on their way out the door. Sean takes the hands of the two littlest ones, Patrick and Janie, as Jenny reminds him to not let them out of his sight until they meet up with Kwi, who'll be walking her own brood to the same school. Sean is about to make his usual complaint about risking missing his train, but he catches my eye decides not to.  
  
Then they are gone. Mary Pat leaves the room for another hour's sleep. We're alone in the kitchen, me and Jenny. Jenny pours coffee for us both then sits across from me, looking at me hard, searching like.  
  
"Are you still going out there?" she asks.  
  
"If you and Kwi and Mary Pat can handle the Harp and Drum."  
  
"You know we can."  
  
I nod. She's making me feel like going out there is a shameful thing and I don't like it. This shows on my face.  
  
"Don't be that way, Love, you know the boys have to go to school." she says.  
  
"It's not that." I say. "Don't you think they deserve candles, Jenny?"  
  
This she thinks about for a little while. She isn't upset about opening the Harp and Drum by herself or about me suggesting my grandsons miss school. She is actually thinking about my question.  
  
When she is done considering it the corners of her mouth turn up slightly in a small and rather serious smile.  
  
"Priest Vallon doesn't need your prayers and Bill wouldn't appreciate them." she says and laughs.  
  
I share the laugh, but I'm about to tell her that I think that Bill would appreciate our prayers more than she thinks.  
  
Suddenly but gently she covers one of my hands with hers.  
  
"Those were such violent times and such violent men." she says "It's almost impossible to remember that that was New York. It feels like a thousand years ago in some far away place. All they wanted was for their tribes to survive. As though they were Red Indians or Visigoths and Huns, or something. Then we were coming up, you and me and our eldest children, and all we ever wanted was to never be dirty or hungry or shot at ever ever again. The children now, they can see a life beyond all that. The best thing that telling them about those days could do is give them nightmares. Let the past be."  
  
I nod and caress her hands with my free one, but I'm not convinced. I think suddenly of Sean, climbing down into that big hole our "City Fathers" have seen fit to blast into New York. It reminds me somehow of St. Michael the Archangel fighting the dragon on my father's medallion. I feel the weight of that religious medal on my chest and wonder if it's time to pass it on. Will he even understand it?  
  
  
  
---The End 


	2. Benjamin Franklin Murphy

Meanwhile - Just Down the Street  
  
Inwood - a promising Manhattan neighborhood of "model" tenements for the working class and neat row houses for the middle class scattered with small shops and businesses; Up the main thoroughfare hurries a man of middle years and greater than average weight. Then he pauses, takes his florid watch out of the pocket of his equally garish vest and stares at it distractedly. He wonders if it is too early to "honor" the unofficial mayor of Inwood with a visit. Suddenly he closed his watch, tucked it back into his vest pocket and resumed his former pace.  
  
The name of this overgrown errand boy was Benjamin Franklin Murphy. Everybody in the neighborhood knew him, but nobody knew exactly what he did. Except that they knew he was someone you could go to when you were in trouble, when you needed the system greased- when you needed Tammany Hall on your side. They knew that in turn you would always hear from him come election day.  
  
Murphy had already been down to the Wigwam once already and was now back in Inwood even before the sun had a chance to warm off the chill of the September morning. If it was important enough to get him moving at all ungodly hours of the morning then it important enough to get Amsterdam Vallon out of bed, Murphy finally decided. Especially since waking that most venerable sleeping tiger was precisely what the Boss had in mind.  
  
This was going to be an exceedingly tricky, Murphy thought, Amsterdam was not a Tammany man. Yet Tammany wanted him, needed him, had to have him. The Boss had made that very clear.  
  
Benjamin Franklin Murphy sighed, he managed to keep clear of most of Tammany's dirty business. Tammany was no gentleman's club, it was, however it was the only party that cared about them "down here". So, Murphy was loyal to Tammany and Tammany was loyal to Murphy, as long as he delivered his quarter each election day. It was a fine line that Murphy walked between loyalty to the Wigwam and loyalty to his neighborhood, yet it was precisely his ability to walk that line that made him useful to both.  
  
Now as he walked, he thought about Amsterdam Vallon, who had in a sense become his quarry that morning. He had always had a thought that their destinies were linked somehow. This morning that thought worried him.  
  
Benjamin Franklin Murphy  
  
I was just a lad of fifteen on that long hot summer night of July 13, 1862. My folks didn't light a candle in the window. Instead, we boarded up our shop. Skilled tradesmen with their own workshops, even ones as low on the social scale as a tanner with a hole in the wall off Paradise Square, feared the prospect of a riot as much as they feared the draft. We spent the next day hiding in the dank, dark, cellar of our shop while the city outside determined to commit self-murder. The day after the riot, my brothers and I escaped into the streets to see if the world had changed.  
  
In Paradise Square people milled around in small desolate clusters. The buildings were not damaged were tightly boarded. Wagons took away the bodies of the dead. Intermittently showers of fat warm raindrops fell to put out the last of the smoldering fires and wash blood into the gutters.  
  
We fell in with a group of boys our own age, most younger than me, and exchanged stories. We were young enough to be excited by the idea that our city had been the site of battle, especially since we had cut our teeth on newspaper reports of the War. I remember one of us, I don't remember who, inventing a wild tale to explain it - it had Confederates and Lincoln's army running around like mad with British Redcoats thrown in for good measure and all of it somehow triumphant for New York in general and for us in particular. I lost my temper with - the way older kids do when they realize how little a younger compatriot understands the basic fabric of reality . In other words, I yelled at him for just being a kid.  
  
"If it's a battle, this is, then I think we lost it, boyo!" I remember shouting.  
  
"That's where you're wrong, Benjy," one of the others said, "I heard the Bill The Butcher's dead and the knife that's buried in his chest is belonging to Priest Vallon's own son."  
  
Now here was a story of epic proportions that I could give a little credence to. William Cutting's thugs were a terror to every artisan and shopkeeper in the Points; that was God's honest truth. Priest Vallon was bit more on the mythical side - in some tales he was more like an avenging angel than a man, taller than life, wielding a sword and an iron cross used as a shield. But even my Mam, who didn't want aught to do the gangsters described Priest Vallon as a true Irish patriot and a defender of the Church who was deviously murdered by Cutting. If Priest Vallon's own son had killed the Butcher then the Points had a new ruler. The thought of a noble Irish boy-king ruling the Points - there was an idea capable of giving me a frisson of excitement and new possibilities.  
  
It was the next day that someone pointed out to me a man of about six years my senior of no more than average height who glared at the world with a wary squint.  
  
"That's Amsterdam Vallon. He killed the Butcher." My compatriot whispered in my ear.  
  
On that day, Boss Tweed's Tammany Hall had temporarily relocated its soup dispensing operations from the docks to the streets. Looking to make a little money, I charmed my way into the company of the Tammany men. Showing myself to be a bright boy, I was picking up a few nickels fetching and carrying for them. That's exactly what I was doing when I noticed the presumed new ruler of the Five Points. He was part of a group of people, including two great huge Plug Uglies and two men dressed in the Dead Rabbit colors, who were occupying the street corner opposite where the Tammany men were distributing food. He sat there amongst them incongruously perched on a chair, watching every move the Tammany men made. My eyes kept wandering back to him, a little disappointed, a little fearful, very much fascinated.  
  
A little later I was sent out on an errand that required me to pass them. I set my eyes in front of me careful not to look at the gangsters as I passed.  
  
Then, "Hey boyo, I've got an errand for you" : He called me over to him.  
  
He held out two quarter-dollars, quite a prize. I looked at him. From the closer vantage point I saw that he was wounded in one leg; that's why he was sitting. His eyes were slightly over-bright. He looked exhausted and determined.  
  
"You're not sure you want to take my money?" he asked, matter-of-factly.  
  
I shook my head.  
  
"Don't worry about it." He said, "It's not like their money's any less tainted." He pointed at Tweed's lackeys.  
  
I nodded solemnly. "I'll run you errand, sir, but first I have to do what they've already bid me."  
  
"You do that. Then you come back."  
  
I nodded again.  
  
About a quarter of an hour later I was back on the street corner taking the coins into my hand. Then he entrusted me with a half dollar more and told me what to do.  
  
"You take this half-dollar piece over there to the biggest boss that the Wigwam's got over there Make sure he knows who it's coming from. Do you know my name?"  
  
He sounded genuinely curious. "Vallon." I replied.  
  
"Right, like I said make sure he knows. Then grab a pail of that soup and a couple of loaves of bread and take it around to the old Satan's Circus."  
  
"The Butcher's!" I involuntarily cut him off with my awed exclamation.  
  
"Not no more." He said. "The Butcher's dead. We are kind of occupying it like, until things calm down and we can see what can be done with it. Now, next you go 'round back and knock on the door. Ask for Miss Everdeane. You give that food to her. We got people holed up there. You understand?"  
  
"Yes sir."  
  
I took the money to Pat Tilden, the man who seemed in charge and told him what had happened.  
  
"If Vallon ever speaks to you again.No, if you ever even see him again, Boy; you let us know." Tilden said and pressed the money I had just given him back into my hand.  
  
So, I set off with the bread and soup, reflecting on the pleasant fact that I had already made an entire dollar off the venture. No wonder I'm still running the same errand to this day. ....................................  
  
Benjamin Franklin Murphy rang the off hours bell at the Harp and Drum and soon the shutters of an upstairs window were opened. The flame-haired moll who had answered the back door of Satan's Circus forty-years ago was the same woman as the grey-haired wife staring down at him.  
  
"What is it you want, Murphy?" she said.  
  
She sounded annoyed, but as usual Murphy wasn't sure if the annoyance was real, or if she was playing with him.  
  
"I need to speak with your husband, Mrs. Vallon. It's important this time." He called up.  
  
Jenny Vallon shook her head as if to suggest that his statement was implausible. When Murphy opened his mouth to explain, she quickly cut him off.  
  
"Shut your gob. I can't listen to you both at the same." Then she turned away and said, "It's 'Mr. Tammany Hall' Murphy, that's who."  
  
Then there was a slight pause in the proceedings, during which Murphy felt his mood sink lower and his anxiety level rise. He greatly suspected that Amsterdam would be in the mood to talk the blarney and he needed to talk serious.  
  
Jenny ended the break in the conversation. "No," she said loudly to the interior of the apartment, in a tone that suggested that a monumental patience with the ways of men was being worn away, "If you want that said, get over here and say it your-ownself."  
  
Then sure enough, she turned from the window and out of Murphy's view and Amsterdam Vallon took her place at the window.  
  
"Murphy," he called down. "What are you doing sticking your pig-nose in my business at this time of day? Can't them that pull your chain at the old Wigwam at least wait 'til I open my shop before you hand them a report of what color socks I'm wearing today?"  
  
Yeah, he was definitely in the mood for a bit of verbal sparring. Benjamin Franklin Murphy wished he could sincerely oblige but stood there instead, heavy of purpose nervously fingering the large gold-plated links of his watch chain.  
  
"Please, Amsterdam, it's a serious matter I've come to discuss with you this morning: come down here so we can talk business." He said.  
  
And as he stood there he knew that those familiar blue eyes were scanning him as they narrowed to slits. Not that he could see this, not really at this distance. But he knew it all the same - whether this knowledge was based in familiarity or whether he could actually feel that discerning gaze was not something Benjamin Murphy would like to think too much on.  
  
"Oh, so it's official high-mucketty-muck business your Lords and Masters have sent you on. Is it, you pretentious lace-curtain buying bastard?" Vallon replied.  
  
Murphy was pleased to hear a slight change in his old acquaintance's tone of voice and felt a corresponding weight shift from his shoulders. The wit was still engaged, but so too was that sharp steel trap of Vallon's mind. Murphy knew now that he would not have to force himself to tell the whole story: Vallon would gladly drag it out of him. He was so relieved that he took his usual cu in their ritualistic sparring.  
  
"You bet it's official business I'm on and what I'm saying is that I'll tell you about it if you'll talk to me like a civilized man instead of yelling out an upstairs window like the bog bred tenement rat that ya are." 


	3. War in the Bowery

Between the Blessed Isles and the Brooklyn Bridge Chapter 3 War in the Bowery By Eppie Black and Dogbrain  
  
Notes: All previous disclaimers apply. Dedicated to Shannon "Porkchop" Cowden.  
  
The sight of Benjamin Franklin Murphy fidgeting outside my window had served to lift my spirits for a short while but it was all too easy to see that my favorite Tammany lackey had a whole lot more on his mind than convincing me to back up the Wigwam's latest slate of candidates and whatever political panacea they happened to be pushing. Which is his usual business with me - that and keeping an eye on me for the Wigwam. My usual business with him, by the way, is making sure that Inwood gets a fair return on the votes it sends Tammany's way - that and keeping Tammany Hall convinced that I am one harmless and retired ex- gang boss, which is basically true. Anyroad, I unlocked the door for him and we sat together in the empty bar, him shaking like a leaf and me beginning to think back to my dream of the night before. I could feel trouble headed my way.  
  
Murphy refused my offer of coffee and then a further offer of a cigar. But I was in need of both and so procured them. He lit a cigarette of his own and then sat there looking at me like he was wanting something from me.authority, I guess. Something I didn't want to wield no longer but, well I took the bait and the lead in the conversation.  
  
"What's troubling you, Benjy?" I asked.  
  
Then Ben Murphy launched into a story of open gang warfare on the streets of our city the likes of which I had not heard since me and the Butcher's final dust-up was interrupted by the Draft Riots of 1862.  
  
........The Events of the Previous Evening............  
  
"All right, gentlemen, lay down your bets for the next round. Lay 'em down." Called Colleen Kinney, a gaudily beribboned female stuss dealer. As she continued her patter she sized up the customers at her table.  
  
The first, a shabby, hunched, hungry-eyed old man, quickly placed a spare dace, two pitiful pennies on top of the ace of spades that was painted onto Colleen's table then equally quickly dropped a copper lug onto the black queen.  
  
"A widow to win and a lady-wife to loose." Pattered Colleen, who wanted to feel sorry for the little man despite her knowledge that it was addicts like him who put the butter on her bread.  
  
"How about you, Sir? Lay your brads down." She added to the next customer. Now here was the type she liked to see at her table - a right swank young thug got up in his best clothes and spreading a swell of cash around, apparently in order to impress the gay bene blowen on his arm. They were kicking up the high life and having a grand time of it.  
  
"Well, Pops here might find the lady a loser. But I feel lucky tonight.when it come to the dames." Said the young tough as he laid a half-dollar on the queen of spades next to the old man's lug.  
  
"Oh youse!" laughed his moll, playfully slapping his arm. Her dangly paste and glass earrings flashed in the dim light of the stuss dive as she shook her head giggling. Then her man put his lug on top of the five of Spades. "That's the Lady to win and the Burroughs to lose." Said Colleen, calling the bet.  
  
Then she turned to her third customer. This guy she really didn't like - he was far too cool. For the past hour she had been trying to figure out his angle. Was he a gambler who believed he had worked out a system? Was he a detective about to raid the place? Or were they about to get knocked over.again? Then the cool customer dispelled any questions regarding his origins by reaching into his vest pocket, pulling out a red handkerchief decorated with white borders and proceeding to ostentatiously mop his brow with it. At Annie Picken's table nearby two customers performed exactly the same actions. As did one at Wa-Lin's in the corner. And the young man who had been cautiously sipping the heavily baptized beer at the dingy bar. And yet another man standing by the door.  
  
Porkchop Cowden, the proprietor of this particular gambling dive, which was nestled beneath the Allen Street arch of the Second Avenue elevated railway, stormed into his own backroom and grabbed the lapels of the dapper young man who had been watching the stusshouse through a peephole.  
  
"Did you see that!" he seethed. "Them 5 Pointers flaunting their colors in my crib! You going to do anything, Ritchie? Do I have Eastmann's protection or don't I?"  
  
"Calm down 'Chop, calm down." Said Ritchie Fitzpatrick, not without a hint of threat since he was after all the first lieutenant of the most powerful gang in the Bowery. "You got my backing, so you got Eastmann's backing, okay."  
  
Fitzpatrick then forcefully removed Cowden's long thin fingers from his lapels. "If you behave yourself that is. Me and my crew will take care of your vermin problem and send those Dead Rabbit wannabes back south of Mike Salter's place where they belong."  
  
Cowden, still agitated, reached for his pistol from his shoulder holster and spinning its barrels started murmuring, "Knocked my place over three times, I'm goin' to pop a cap in some 5 Pointer tonight, man. I don't know if these third rate yegs ya' brought with ya, can do the job. I got firepower. I got this baby and my big one 'neath the bar." His words were feverish and his eyes were rolling in his head.  
  
Ritchie Fitzpatrick looked at him and was somewhat disgusted, "No need for that. We just send them back to Paul Kelly with a shinty on their glimmers and a pain in their breadbaskets. That'll be enough to learn them that the Bowery belongs to the Eastmanns. Now get out there Cowden and mind your till."  
  
Another tense hour passed before Colleen called for the last bets of the evening. One of the 5 Pointers stood up. "All right, Cowden, give us our regulars." said Louis Liogge moving towards the counter.  
  
"I don't owe you nothing!" shrieked Cowden, "This place belongs to the Eastmanns."  
  
Liogge slung a beer bottle toward Cowden and it slammed into the wall behind him with a loud and satisfying crash. Ritchie Fitzpatrick and his crew emerged from the back room, brass knuckles and slung-shots swinging.  
  
It looked like the 5 Pointers might get the drumming that Fitzpatrick and Cowden had decided that they deserved but Liogge's was a doughty crew and Cowden's agitation only grew as he watched the 5 Pointer's handle the Eastmanns all too easily and continue to wreck his dive. Even Shannon Cassidy, an agile but inexperienced teenage 5 Pointer managed to get a lucky blow in and evade his Eastmann opponent. As said Eastmann collapsed to the floor in pain clutching his manhood; Cassidy sprinted over him, gave him an extra kick in the side for good measure and grabbed the cashbox.  
  
Cowden popped up from behind the bar and with a hysterical shriek shot Cassidy square in the chest. The stuss girls and cowering female customers screamed. Every man in the joint who was carrying a firearm drew. The young gangster fell dead weight to the floor. The cashbox crashed spilling its contents. Liogge fired at Cowden but he ducked back beneath the bar. The bar mirror shattered. Simultaneously yet another of Paul Kelly's soldiers fired at Cassidy's original opponent. Still dazed from Cassidy's blow to the groin, he went down, wounded in the stomach.  
  
Cowden crept around to the end of the bar where he fired off his shotgun's second round at Liogge who had taken refuge behind an overturned stuss table. Stung by splinters of the shattered table, Liogge realized that there was no percentage in fighting a shotgun with pistols in the crowded confines of the stusshouse and, also that Cowden would now have to reload. "5 Pointers out!" he yelled and gave good example.  
  
As Eastmann's men picked themselves off the floor - they saw that one of their own was also down oblivious to irony and with a cry of "Murderin' thieves!" they too spilled out into the streets. For a moment the two crews stood on opposite sides of the street glaring at each other. Just then Cowden popped out of the stusshouse door and fired off two wild rounds hitting nothing (for which the Eastmanns, themselves, had even more cause to be grateful than the 5 Pointer).  
  
As the 5 Pointers took cover, Liogge stood still, full of dark thoughts about the Eastmanns in general and Cowden in particular. Suddenly full of rage that Cowden still lived while Shannon Cassidy, his protégé, lay dead in the stusshouse Piogge raised his pistol and took a carefully aimed shot. Porkchop Cowden did not have long to meditate on the difference between a crazy fool with a shotgun and a crack shooter with a fine pistol: He dove for cover but too late and a third body landed on the floor, this time, half-inside and half outside the stusshouse.  
  
Within seconds both crews were under cover, but still exchanging fire. Within minutes, the first reinforcements from both gangs began to arrive. ....................................  
  
"Within an hour there were over a hundred gangsters trading potshots at each other from behind cover beneath the second avenue el." Continued Murphy. "and then the Gophers showed up."  
  
"The Gophers showed up?" asked Vallon laughing.  
  
"Yeah, I guess it looked like too much fun to miss."  
  
"It sounds like the biggest dust-up in years." Said Vallon shaking his head, "but that many boyos out in the street and only three deaths. That ain't a serious war, Benjy, what's all the fuss?"  
  
"They drove the police back twice before they gave way, Amsterdam. The coppers had to organize reinforcements from all the surrounding precints and come in with a massed force."  
  
Amsterdam couldn't help but wince at that phrase. He'd seen a massed force all right. Memories of the effects of a fusillade of bullets on his fellow five pointers came into his mind. The memories of the draft riot could be hid sure enough, but hit the right trigger and out they came.  
  
Murphy quickly understood the look on his friend's face. "It wasn't like that. There weren't even many hurt when the coppers came in."  
  
Amsterdam Vallon smoothed his hair back and leaned back into his chair., "Sure and do you think I'm the only one who remembers? I don't want to see another war in the streets of this city."  
  
"Neither does Tammany Hall. That's why the boss wants you to referee a parley between Eastmann and Kelly." Said Murphy. 


End file.
